One-Man Show

Movies about Jersey Shore types with a penchant for sleeveless-undershirts-as-outer­wear and Internet porn are not the typical fare of this esteemed publication. But never has there been such a film directed—and written, and starred in, and even partially edited—by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who is quickly proving himself to be one of the most talented chaps to pass through Hollywood. The result, Don Jon, is a stylized twist on a romantic comedy and a surprisingly poignant meditation on how the modern world warps our expectations about relationships. "The story is about how people treat each other like things, and how the media contributes to that," Gordon-Levitt says. "I thought writing a comedy where you've got a guy who watches too much pornography and a girl who watches too many Holly­wood romances would be a funny way to get at it."

Funny it is, thanks to a sharp script and highly amusing performances by Gordon-Levitt (whose countless skills on display in this film include the ability to achieve a Christian Bale–esque physical transformation), Julianne Moore, Scarlett Johansson, and Tony Danza. Among the more challenging aspects of making Don Jon, the 32-year-old says, was finding quick clips of actual pornography that were illustrative enough to convey his character's online addiction but not so illustrative as to jeopardize an R rating. "That was, in fact, a very time-consuming and arduous part of the process," Gordon-Levitt says. Less troublesome was the transition from working in front of the camera to behind it. "I've been doing TV and movies since I was a kid, so everything on set felt totally familiar to me," he says. He especially enjoyed the post-filming process, having bought Final Cut Pro as a birthday present to himself when he turned 21 so he could create his own short films. "I loved it so much that it was probably the biggest contributing factor to my dropping out of college," says the onetime Columbia student.

As for directing such an accomplished cast, Gordon-Levitt says, "It's about striking that balance between being collaborative and sticking to your guns. Right before Don Jon I had worked with Rian Johnson on Looper, Christopher Nolan on The Dark Knight Rises, and Steven Spielberg on Lincoln, and they all shared that quality of having a strong, clear, thorough vision on the one hand and, on the other hand, being able to be flexible and spontaneous."

Gordon-Levitt clearly has that leader/­collab­orator quality in spades. The strongest evidence of this is his actual full-time job: running hitRECord, an online production company he started with his brother in 2005—after he had achieved child stardom on the television series 3rd Rock from the Sun but before the world caught on to not just his acting but his musical theater talents with his breakout film (500) Days of Summer and several impressive Saturday Night Live hosting stints. HitRECord aggregates music, video, writing, and illustration from artists around the world, often crowdsourcing short films from the work of various contributors. "There's this film we made last year called Flickering Lights that started with a spoken-word poem by one artist, which we then edited against footage and images and music from many different artists," Gordon-Levitt says.

The concept may seem as if it would be more appealing to Burning Man attendees than studio suits, but last year a buzzy new cable network called Pivot came calling, and in January Gordon-Levitt will debut HitRECord on TV!, in which each episode will track the collaborative creation of a project based on a particular theme. In the process of creating, hosting, and producing the show, ­Gordon-Levitt has also turned into a social media entrepreneur, using Twitter, Facebook, and the HitRECord website to solicit creative submissions. The real question is, does he sleep? "I prefer to, but I'm fortunate to do things that I really love, so I like to do them all the time," he says. "I've been nonstop for years."

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